After conquering the free-to-play market, Epic Games has set its sights on core PC gaming. Beforehand, there wasn't really a company out there to challenge Valve's dominance with Steam. Sure, there's the Discord Store and GOG, but they haven't garnered the attention the Epic Games Store has achieved in the past few months. Today, Ubisoft committed to only releasing The Division 2 on the Epic Games Store, therefore bypassing Steam and possibly dealing a massive blow to the platform.
The Division 2 will only be available on PC through the Epic Games Store and directly from Ubisoft. That's not all though. Ubisoft will release even more PC games on the platform in 2019. Epic Games is even going as far as to incorporate Uplay into its online services. It's unclear if other "AAA" publishers will follow Ubisoft's lead, but this is definitely a promising start to say the least.
Ubisoft's Vice President of Partnership Chris Early said, "We entrust Epic Games to deliver a smooth journey for our fans, from preordering the game and enjoying our beta to the launch. Epic Games continues to disrupt the video game industry, and their third-party digital distribution model is the latest example, and something Ubisoft wants to support."
Epic Games only takes a twelve percent cut of sales, compared to Valve's thirty percent cut with Steam. The developer has garnered tremendous success with Fortnite and now reaches a lot of users. While the Epic Games Store is still in its infancy — and doesn't have the sheer number of gamers Steam does — it's making a lot of bold moves like securing exclusive releases. Epic Games' Founder Tim Sweeney added, "We aim to provide the most publisher-friendly store, providing direct access to customers and an 88 percent revenue split, enabling game creators to further reinvest in building great games."
